


dear no one, no need to be searching

by jenomeow



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Happy Ending, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan-centric, M/M, Mentioned JohnJae, Soulmates, donghyuck is just sooo cool, he killed the pope, immortal time traveler!donghyuck, mention of religious figure, mentioned dotae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27544513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenomeow/pseuds/jenomeow
Summary: if he was asked what’s the most important thing he has learned as an immortal time traveler, his answer would be that time is, among all the essential things in life, the most irrelevant one.or: soulmates live in different points of time, destined to never meet.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 132
Collections: Challenge #3 — soulmates





	dear no one, no need to be searching

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much, my dear beta!! you did amazing<33 and i also want to thank the mods they are awesome and little wonder is awesome and soulmates are awesome
> 
> !!!!!!!!! LET'S GOOOOO

Donghyuck doesn’t remember in which year he was born. He’s been alive for too long, and he has lived in so many eras, for too many years. At some point, he forgot how old he is. At some point, it stopped having any importance at all.

As a time traveler that is in charge of fixing historical moments that go out of their original course, Donghyuck knows about how important time is. It’s funny because if he was asked what’s the most important thing he has learned as an immortal time traveler, his answer would be that time is, among all the essential things in life, the most irrelevant one; it can be manipulated, it can be changed, whatever happens in its borders doesn’t have to stay that way. Humans need it, humans give it purpose and relevance, but at the end of the day, time doesn’t even exist.

Time is the stupidest, most important element humans are bound to.

Time is also the thing that keeps soulmates apart. There is hardly any information about soulmates, but what everybody knows is that soulmates are destined to never meet. They are born in different periods of time, with thousands of years in between the birth of one and the death of the other.

Donghyuck has heard so many people say that if they could, they would become time travelers just to find their soulmate. He snorts every time. Do people think it is that easy to time-travel? Do they think it’s as easy as wanting to find their soulmate for it to happen? They forget there is an infinite amount of eras and periods of time, so how can you know in which one your soulmate lives? And even if you somehow manage to discover it, how to know which part of the world they are in? It’s too naive to think that you can find your soulmate just because you can travel in time.

Soulmates, for time travelers, stop having any relevance after a while, when they understand that it’s impossible to find your special someone even with this ability.

So Donghyuck focuses on his job and forgets about his soulmate and how he could be dedicating his life to finding his soulmate.

He’s been everywhere. Name a place and a year and Donghyuck has probably been there at least twice in his immortal life. He has too much work to do and, fortunately, too much time. He jumps from the year 1900 to the year 5809 in the same hour. He fixes timelines and fucks up people that are damaging the said timelines. He kills presidents and kisses princesses, he dances with Emperors and stabs street vendors so they move to the side and leave the way free for that one person that needs to walk down there in that exact second.

His job varies. Sometimes he spends years looking for one stone that made a carriage lose its path and sometimes he’s married to a politician for three minutes in order to prevent a nuclear explosion. Donghyuck has to count every single second and never be late, but at the same time, he can waste decades in something as trivial as a lottery game.

And there are, of course, soulmates. He’s never met his, and he never will, because that’s how it is supposed to be, but that doesn’t mean he can’t meet other people’s soulmates. How to know if they’re soulmates? Because you can see the empty spaces, that have a very specific human shape, in their lives. You see one of them and think about the other for no specific reason.

Donghyuck met Doyoung in 1825 in Korea and two decades after, he jumped to the year 3088 and met Taeyong, and he could see, in the way Taeyong walked, how much help Doyoung would have been if he was there holding his hand, preventing him from tripping on air. When he went back to 1825 to test his theory, all he could taste in Doyoung’s food were Taeyong’s favorite ingredients. Maybe Donghyuck was imagining things, but he could swear Jaehyun’s stupid jokes from the year 2056 would have made Johnny laugh his ass off back in the year 1603.

He wonders if the way he cooks is the way someone, somewhere in one of the many eras, loves to eat. He wonders if his jokes would make someone laugh for hours and he wonders if maybe he could prevent many falls with just his hand holding another. Donghyuck wonders who could fill the empty spaces in his life, the ones he doesn’t even realize exist.

And that is the thing about soulmates, too. No one realizes they are missing something— _someone._ Or, maybe, no one misses anything. Maybe everyone is complete, and their lives are complete too, but perhaps adding a soulmate would also add more color to a painting that is already beautiful. Oh, but well, what does Donghyuck even know? He’s just a time traveler with a way too full schedule that sometimes is too empty, who lives slowly but too quickly for anyone to catch up, and time doesn’t exist, and soulmates don’t meet, and there are missing pieces in everyone’s lives but at the same time, there aren’t.

And nothing makes sense, and Donghyuck thinks of himself as wise because he discovered that nothing has an explanation and instead of losing his mind, he just learned to live with it, just like he learned to live with his strange life, jumping from one year to another.

Until he can’t jump anymore.

His time-traveling device breaks and he has no way of repairing it, just staring at his necklace with empty eyes, dreading the year he’s stuck in— 2020. _What a weird year to be stuck in,_ he thinks. At least he’s not in the apocalyptic timeline.

It’s weird because there is technology but it’s too simple to satisfy him. Maybe if he were in a year where there was no technology at all, he wouldn’t be as frustrated, because in 2020 he has a phone, but he can’t call people in distant galaxies. He sometimes can’t even call anyone because there is no service, goddammit!

He knows where exactly he is going to be the next day, he knows what he is going to be doing. He knows what will happen the next day, and the day after, _and the day after._ Time suddenly does matter because he can’t just rewind if he didn’t catch his bus. He’s not aging, but he has to live as if he was: hurriedly, trying to achieve as many things as possible.

It's good. Donghyuck likes it. He likes how calm it is. It’s a big change, but he’s getting used to this weird year and this weird technology. He goes to college and studies at night. He loses sleep over video games and exams and makes friends.

One day, a few years into this new life, Donghyuck is waiting for a lecture to start. He knows what it will be about, he knows what he will do during the lecture and he knows what he will do once it’s over. Maybe he has gotten too used to knowing, to have perfect control, and maybe destiny is done with him and his know-it-all attitude, because in the last minute before the teacher considers him as late, a guy barges into the hall, disheveled hair, glasses on the tip of his nose and backpack about to fall from his shoulder, and smiles shyly at the professor.

Donghyuck observes with curiosity how the guy scans the room for an empty seat, which is next to Donghyuck.

“Hey, uh, I’m Mark,” the guy starts. Donghyuck wants to tell him to fix his damn glasses before they fall from his face and break on the floor, but also that it’s nice to meet him, he supposes. “Can I sit here? It’s not reserved, right?”

“It’s not,” Donghyuck says, shrugging. The guy grins.

There was this one time where Donghyuck had to go to the moon to punch an astronaut. He got to see the stars from very close, and it was amazing. The stars were so bright and there were so many, but right this second, he will go against everything he believes in (that romance is fucking dead) just to say that stars should be jealous of Mark’s eyes because they outshine them. Mark’s eyes shine and Donghyuck, for the first time in so long, doesn’t know what the fuck to do with himself.

Donghyuck killed the Pope once. He married a princess for three of his days that translated into 50 years for her. He met real vampires and he drank tea with Jesus. He was the president of the United States eight times in different eras and he went fishing with so many famous singers he doesn’t even remember how many exactly. The point here is: he’s met so many people, so many interesting people that meeting new people became boring; what could they know that he doesn’t already? What can they tell him that he hasn’t heard before? And yet Mark, who seems simple and common, is making Donghyuck’s dead curiosity reappear.

He wants to ask, he wants to know. What, exactly? Hell if he knows. Donghyuck just wants to know about Mark.

People say a lot of things about what it’s like meeting a soulmate. That it may feel like fireworks, full of emotions and tears. It must be the weirdest, most intense feeling in the world. It must be like breaking rules and feeling _free._

Years later, when Donghyuck realizes what exactly happened there in that lecture hall, he can finally answer that long asked question of how it feels to meet your soulmate: it feels like something you have never felt before, but that somehow feels familiar, known. Meeting your soulmate, the one person you’re _not_ supposed to ever meet feels like finding something you lost a long time ago, so long that you even forgot you lost it, and man, what an amazing achievement it is to find it.

Who would have thought that the one thing he needed to find his soulmate, contrary to what everyone predicted, was to never search?

**Author's Note:**

> title from dear no one by tori kelly
> 
> soooo thoughts? owo
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/jenosglow)


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